Crash Course
by great-growlithe-gamer
Summary: a year or two after the events of the movie,Vanellope gets a concusssion in a kart crash.When she wakes up, something's wrong.She can't seem to remember much of anything...what are the racers like, and who are these people from different games that claim to know her? rated T for car crash/injury. just in case.
1. the crash

**AN: this is my second story, which takes place after the movie. It isn't at all related to my first one, just so you know. This story is going to mainly be in first person, because I like to experiment with writing. This is kind of like a prologue. Thanks for reading! This is, obviously, copyright Disney and stuff.**

The competitive race for the night was about to begin, and the people in the stands mulled about, waiting for the race to begin. The president of the game _'Sugar Rush'_ was lined up with her kart, preparing for the race with the others in the pole position that showed what place everyone was to start at. She had insisted that her friends attend, so Ralph and Calhoun waited impatiently in the stands for the race to start, fidgeting and looking up at the race monitor for the countdown. Felix waited as well, though he was less impatient and happier, as usual. Tonight's race was being held in Jawbreaker junction, one of the more dangerous tracks in the candy game. It was considered so because of the jawbreakers that littered the track and surrounding area, as, no surprise, they're very hard. The sky was clear, and the bright candy sun's rays reflected off the power ups. The racers had finished preparing their karts, and soon the countdown had begun on the screen monitor, the announcer's voice calling out the numbers. "three, two, one, GO!" the karts sped off in a flash, leaving dust in their wake.

Vanellope began in fifth place, but quickly gained on Taffyda, Snowanna, and Minty, passing them up after a brief moment. In second place, she was drafting Rancis, staying closely behind him and using the vacuum created by his car to gain speed. They were approaching a power up, which Rancis received. "sweet seekers!" the announcer let everyone know what he got. Vanellope groaned inwardly, knowing full well that she could probably not dodge it. She had agreed long ago not to glitch during the competitive races, and sweet seekers were essentially candy homing missiles. Then a thought came. Maybe, if she could get around that corner fast enough, she could escape them.

The plan formed in her head, and she kicked the kart into full throttle, going as fast as she could towards the corner, where she intended to drift, not slowing down for the corner, and turn steeply, so that the kart passed the corner sideways and kept going at high enough speed to cause the seekers to crash into the wall and not her kart.

The sharp turn was incoming, and just as Vanellope was beginning her drift, all three of the seekers slammed into her kart's side. Typically, this would be no big deal, but the angle of the turn, paired with how fast she was going, made it otherwise.

The crowd let out a collective gasp as her kart veered off the track, and Vanellope looked scared out of her wits, which was difficult to do.

Given the situation, however, it wasn't uncalled for. Speeding towards a gigantic jawbreaker without any means of stopping isn't exactly 'safe', or on the top of anyone's to do list.

Vanellope could not control the kart because it was undergoing a crash sequence, and for it to finish…would mean crashing into something.

Vanellope finally let out a small squeak of a scream when the kart went over a bump and launched her out of it, the front end nosediving into the ground and the back shooting up. The kart flipped onto it's top shortly after Vanellope went airborne. Bracing for impact, she shut her eyes and stiffened with fear.

And at a speed she would have admired if it weren't for the situation, flew straight into the jawbreaker, headfirst.

A loud, sickening CRACK was heard, and for one horrible, gut-wrenching moment, the eerily silent crowd thought it was the noise of a skull cracking.

It wasn't.

The jawbreaker began to crack, and crumbled away to the ground, where Vanellope had fallen after the impact. Before anyone could assess what had just happened, the leaderboard monitor switched back to the empty karts, viewing a race that had stopped dead in it's tracks. A new race had begun-the race to help the president.

Although people had arrived quickly, nobody dared go near where Vanellope was. This decision was a wise one, if Ralph had seen anyone within ten feet of her before he was positive she was ok, they would soon have many more injuries than her. Even Calhoun backed off, letting the giant man approach the site alone.

He gently picked up Vanellope, who had minor injuries besides a big one on her head. He held her out to Felix, who fumbled for his hammer and quickly fixed all the outer injuries. Muttering a gruff 'thanks', Ralph began to stomp off towards the castle, an unconscious Vanellope held snugly in his arms, gently but firm enough to not let her drop or be removed from the spot without his cooperation. He knew that Felix's hammer fixed outer injuries, but it could not fix internal ones, like her concussion. He assumed that they had ice packs or something at the castle, and he wasn't wrong.

Soon she was in bed, with a snow-cone ice pack on her head where the injury had been. There had been a few concussions like this before, it was nothing out of the ordinary. What _was_ out of the ordinary was the fact that she simply wouldn't wake up.

Two days had passed, but she hadn't even opened an eye. She remained unconscious, and it was beginning to worry people more than it had been.

Ralph had not left the room where she lay, and sat stone-still, watching over her warily, and tiredly. He was the exact opposite of Vanellope, he had not slept since she had crashed. Occasionally people tending to Vanellope tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he was either unresponsive or only let out a grunt of acknowledgement to them.

It was the first week of school for the players, and due to a request from parents, Litwak had closed the arcade so that kids would start the school year right and not skip the first few days in favor of being at the arcade. The old man had been wanting a short break anyways, so he had agreed, thus giving the games a week off.

Ralph was spending it at Sugar Rush anyways, so it really wasn't endangering his game in any way to stay and keep watch over Vanellope in hopes she would wake up. If she remained unconscious for past the break, however, that would change.

He was making it clear that he wouldn't move from where he was until she woke up, and nothing short of a full-scale cy-bug attack would make him. Even then, he'd likely just grab Vanellope and move her somewhere safer to continue his watch.

So the two remained in the room, the only thing proving them to be alive the steady rise and fall that represents breathing.

**AN: a car crash is pretty self-explanatory. I tried to go out of my way to make the driving scene realistic, I even looked up NASCAR terms to be sure I wasn't saying something that made no sense. I think it turned out semi-decent, right? Maybe? Tell me what you think about the story, and if you can guess where I'm going with this then kudos. **


	2. good morning to you too

**AN: so, from here on out it's going to be first person, because even though it makes it a little harder to make an in-character story, you can describe very well how the main character is feeling, much better than in third person. Unless you guys have a problem with it, maybe more awkward to read or something, but just tell me if it's ok. Anyway, this is copyrighted by Disney and stuff. Enjoy!**

Ok, so today is not my best race. Actually, scratch that, it's not a race unless I finish, and at this rate I have my doubts about whether or not I can do that. This has to be the _only race ever _that I have crashed in.

Besides lots of the other ones, anyways. But I can't help those, it's during open time, I'm not really driving, players are.

Oh, great, the kart just flipped. And I screamed, cause of stupid instinct. There goes dignity. Just the icing on the crap cake. Whatever, I guess. Not like it would've protected me much anyways. Besides, what's the worst that could happen? This is a kids game, not like I could die. Even if I did, I'd respawn. Probably.

You know what, I'm kinda scared. I hate to admit it, but that's a really big jawbreaker, bigger than Ralph. Oh man, where is he when you need him?

This is really gonna…_hurt!_

My head…! Oooh, that hurts, that really, _really_ hurts. Is it possible for it to split in half? Cause, if that's the case, I have a _splitting_ headache. Haha…look, it's a joke…owww…

Ralph better get here quick…otherwise…oww…my head hurts..

Something just picked me up. Something really, really big. My eyes are shut, but I think this is someone's hand. Who's hands are this freakishly big? And who's…who's Ralph? I know the name….but who? Ok, blacking out. Amazing.

Before I lose consciousness, I have one thought. Gee, screaming and fainting in the same day, how wimpy can I get?

**(breakline/transition) **

Every now and then I become conscious, but I don't open my eyes. My head pounds and I don't feel too much like moving anyways. I know the things I was programmed to, like my name and that I'm a racer in Sugar Rush, also that there are other racers. Don't know a thing about them though.

Other than that, I know one thing that I'm sure was not programmed: that name. who is Ralph? Why do I know that name, why can't I connect it with a face? I thought forgetting things was something old characters did, not kids…

This is very annoying, and if I'm correct, I know annoying.

All of a sudden I hear voices from the room I'm in. I've head people talking before, but it's never anything important. Just some person grunting in reply to what someone else said, effectively killing the conversation.

This one catches my interest though.

"Ralph, brother, are you ok? Come on, you need to relax. You can go do something, we can have a guys night. Take me to Tappers, even, just quit sittin' here! She'll be _fine. _You have nothing to worry about, this is coming from me, the biggest worrier in the _arcade_." A man's voice says, almost soothingly. He said Ralph, that means that the guy is in here, right? Maybe this'll put some pieces together for me. If I know who this guy is, he obviously knows me, so he could maybe explain how I wound up with a headache and in bed.

Another voice speaks up, coming from where the guy who's been in here every time I gained consciousness." Felix. Listen. I'm not leaving this room till' she wakes up." So that's Ralph…let's see where this conversation goes.

By the way, I'm not eavesdropping, they know I'm here. Just not awake.

"brother, I hate seeing you like this." The first voice, Felix, said worriedly.

"Felix, you hate seeing anyone upset." Ralph said flatly.

"well, Vanellope hasn't woken up yet, and it's been two days. You haven't slept a wink and people are getting worried about you _and _Vanellope. Don't you think you could sleep just a little?" Felix pleads with Ralph.

"look.. I'm going to be awake until she wakes up, I don't care if that's not for another _month_,.. I _will _be awake and I _will_ be here." Ralph argues stubbornly, struggling with his words a little. Not the social type, I guess.

Heavy footsteps come into the room, with the clanking of metal.

"shortstack awake yet?" comes the simple question. This voice is a female.

"no, not yet Tammy. You look amazing as usual." Felix says adoringly. Gross, he's mushier than chewed gum!

"that's disappointing. Back to you fix-it. Hey, wreck-it, if you don't stop sittin here you'll grow into the floor. You gonna move you're big caboose or what?" ok, this 'Tammy' person seems pretty straightforward. All three of their voices are familiar, though. I can't seem to remember their faces though. I need to get up.

Naptime's over, so I should open my eyes and see if I can figure out just who exactly these people are.

When I opened my eyes, I was totally unprepared for the burst of light that came with their opening, and yelped in surprise. Too bright!

I shut them again and rubbed my eyes. The next time I opened them, it wasn't as bad. Three curious faces looked down at me, I was still in the bed. I matched the names to the faces pretty quickly. Tammy was the blonde hair one, Felix was the brown hair and blue eyes one, and Ralph…was the one with terrible breath.

"gross! Take a mint, bathroom-breath, we got plenty!" I cover my nose and swat at the air around me. It wasn't _that _bad, it was just funnier if I act like it was.

"kid! You're up! Had us all worried for a minute there, cavity!" Ralph gets excited and picks me up, quickly putting me down when I protested.

"hey, I didn't sit in bed for that long just to be carried around, mister."

"looks like shortstop did wake up." Tammy said with an I-told-you-so expression on her face.

Felix was just beaming for almost no reason.

"ok, this is great and all, but I need to get a few things straight. How did I end up in bed?" I ask curiously. I'm also going to ask who they are, I just need to think of a good way to word that…Ralph and Tammy are both huge compared to me and I don't know what'll happen if I ask it wrong.

"kart crash. Don't worry, the kart's fine, it's you who took the beating. Felix fixed your injuries, but you had a concussion, so long story short, you were in bed for two days." Ralph explained it in very few sentences.

"I figured you'd remember that though."

"yeah, well, funny thing about remembering…"I laugh nervously. Should I just not ask them? They seem pretty happy, I'll probably remember this all soon anyways…no, I'm asking.

"what's funny about remembering?" Ralph asks in a confused tone.

"well you know, just the fact that you sometimes wake up and don'trememberanythingatallandthe npeoplethatclaimtoknowyouare righttherewhenyouwakeupandyo u'resureyouknowthembuthavenoid eawhy…. and yeah, really funny right? Hahaha…ha…ha…oh poop." I tell them really fast, in hopes they won't get it, but they do, and my nervous laugh falls short when they shoot me curious glances.

"are you serious?" Felix asks, receiving the death glare from Ralph and Tammy.

"sorry." he says politely.

"you don't remember anything? Not even a little?" Ralph asks me worriedly.

"I remembered my name, the game I'm in, all that stuff, and your name. I was _kinda_ thinking you could tell me why. If you are going to explain, please do it over there though, cause I wasn't kidding when I said you needed a mint." I admit, then crack another joke at the end. I hate being serious, it's so unnecessary. And booooorrrrrriiiinnnng.

"hey, you try staying up for two days straight, you get morning breath!" he says defensively.

" you two still do that, I see. I'll skip the formalities, I'm Sgt. Calhoun. That's fix-it, and you say you remember wreck-it, no surprise there. You got any ideas as to why you lost your memory?" Tammy says, all serious.

"well gee, I don't know, Sgt. Smarty-pants, maybe it had something to do with the concussion I had." I say sarcastically.

"Maybe walking around will spark your memory, besides, all the racers are waitin to see you, we'd be killing two birds with one stone!" Felix suggests helpfully. I look him over.

"I don't know about you killing anything, you look like a pacifist to me. The only one here, from the looks of it." I say teasingly. I couldn't see this guy hurting a thing, so it was just too good a joke to pass up on it.

"very funny, princess, but he's right." Sarge agreed with Felix. That princess bit kinda bothered me though.

"hey!" I complain about it to them.

"what?"

"I don't know, just that annoyed me for some reason." I explain, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

"interesting, but come on." Ralph says.

"let's go tell Rancis first, poor boy nearly up and had a heart attack." Felix recommended. We agreed.

Hmmm…hopefully this memory loss doesn't take long to settle, I think that with this group we'd have done some interesting things.

**AN: ok, chapter 2! This is the first first person chapter. What'd you think? Was this very out-of-character? Was this in-character but annoying to read? Or was it fine with you? Tell me what you think about the story, don't hesitate to tell me if something bugs you.**


	3. good going, genius

**AN: this chapter is kinda a weird mix, the first half is mostly funny and the second half is a bit more serious than what I usually write. Anyway, this is copyrighted by Disney and stuff. Thanks for reading!**

One short trip down the hall later, some boy in brown came into view.

"oh, phew you're alive!oh that is so relieving, you don't even know. Are you ok? Totally fine, right? Please tell me that's what happened cause Taff said you got brain damage and then Swizz said you died but he was obviously lying, and every night since you crashed Minty and Snow have been coming to my house and throwing rocks at me…" he continued on rambling, and he was pretty panicked, obviously.

Finally he stopped to take a breath and asked a question.

"how come you're not on Ralph's shoulder?"

I rolled my eyes." I know I'm small in comparison, but do I look like a parrot to you?" I cross my arms.

"you _always_ sit up there! Remember?" he exclaims. Oh, the irony…

I start laughing.

"what's funny? Nobody said anything…_oh crud_…I gave the president brain damage! Oh crud oh crud…"

Hmmm…he seems worried…I laugh harder.

"ahh!uhh….uh…Felix! Mr. Felix! Can your hammer fix brain damage!? Please say it can, please, please, please…." He's totally freaking out now, and I'm just laughing at him to the point of nearly crying. I tug on Ralph's finger, still laughing so much my sides hurt. He has to explain for me.

"calm down, kid! She lost her memory, and you brought up remember, and she laughs at everything, so…" he tries to explain as my laugh finally begins to quiet down.

"you shoulda seen your face, it was so funny!" I exclaim happily.

"so…you don't have brain damage?" he asks cautiously.

"the only damage done to my brain is from laughing at you so hard I blew a fuse." I pat his back in mock sympathy.

"I understand your totally hilarious mistake though. So…don't tell anyone else, I wanna see what they do." I tell him. If everyone's as panicked as he is, this is going to be awesome.

He just gapes like a Swedish fish. I really don't doubt what Felix said about him nearly having a heart attack.

"hmm…now that I have the idea, I kinda do want to sit on your shoulder, so…" I jump up and after a brief flash of blue, wind up on Ralph's shoulder.

"well that was interesting. Do I have a habit of doing that? Cause, that's really cool! You're super tall, too! And it's fun up here! I wonder if your fat is bouncy…" I begin jumping up and down on his shoulder. Something tells me it's been said before that I have the attention span of a peanut, and I don't think I can say it's not true. Oh well.

"hey! That's muscle!" Ralph protests.

"are ya sure it's not rock, cause it's about as bouncy as it. That's disappointing. Hey, how many other racers are there?" I ask. Once again, attention span of a peanut.

"I dunno, like 14?" Ralph doesn't really know the answer either, I guess.

"well that's 14 more people to bother, so let's get a move on!" I tell him cheerfully.

Ralph begins moving down the hall, and his shoulder goes up and down as he walks.

"how is it that you're _less_ mature than normal?" Ralph asks irridiculously.

"maybe it's cause I don't have….uh…how many years of experience do I not have that I'm s'posed to?" I ponder this, ignoring the others while I try to get an answer.

"17!"

"17, sweetie."

"17 years."

"uhhh…I got nothing, how many years did you say again?"

Everyone groans loudly as I ask.

"17." Ralph says. Probably again.

"oooooh. So, am I supposed to know lots of stuff about the other racers? I mean, considering I've had _that_ long to know them. We might have a bit of a problem there." I point out.

This is received strangely. Sarge, who'd been smirking just slightly, immediately put on a straight face and glared at Rancis. Ralph shifted around, unsettled. Felix looked up as high as he could and whistled. Rancis looked down, almost shamefully.

Finally Ralph broke the uncomfortable silence.

"don't worry about that, they'll understand. _Right, Rancis_?" Ralph says the last part almost forcibly.

Rancis nods meekly and runs off, probably to the other racers.

"well that was weird. Hey, you guys!" I have another idea before I think about it too much.

"what?" they all seem eager to change the topic.

" Rancis is based on peanut butter cups, right?" I ask curiously.

"yes." Felix confirms.

"are all of the racers based on a type of candy?" I continue.

"yes…" Felix confirms yet again.

"then what am I based on?"

Silence.

"ummmm…I don't know, that's your problem." Ralph says after coming up with nothing after two minutes.

" I guess it's good that you stopped there, if you had worked your poor little brain any harder it would've started spewing smoke!" I laugh at him, it was kinda funny to see him think so hard. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

They groan again.

"oh look, Rancid is back!" I grin slyly at the nickname I thought of for him.

" I heard that!" he pipes up.

"anyways, all the other racers are waiting outside." He says, pointing to the large door.

"great! Maybe if I see them all I'll remember something!" I bounce around excitedly. Everyone exchanges worried glances. Rancis freaks out.

"wait! Maybe, uh...it'd be a better idea if we just waited for you to remember on your own, you know, cause uh…umm…you don't want to get another headache from remembering too much at a time! 17 years is a lot, haha…" he frantically tries to keep me from leaving.

I shoot him a sideways glance and raise an eyebrow at him." You know, even if I technically only remember as much, I wasn't made yesterday, genius." I launch off Ralph's shoulder the same way I got up, with that teleporty-thing, and move towards the door.

"ack! Wait!" he's pretty flustered. Weirdo.

"look, It's cool, don't worry about anything. I'm sure I can't get a headache worse than the one I already have. Besides, I wanna see the other racers! I bet I've got lots of funny things to remember about them. I have to have_ alot_ of jokes on them after 17 years, I want to know what those are. Once I remember all that, then it can go back to how it probably was before I crashed. Which is kinda what I want to do. I bet if I'm fun now, I'm even more fun when I had time to work on it, so let's go! Move it, this is a racing game, you'd think that you people could move a little faster." I playfully hit his shoulder. He needs to calm down, he's overthinking this.

He just squirms uncomfortably while I go open the door.

Outside, there are a lot of kids.

"you're up!"

"great!"

"awesome, you woke up!"

"phew, you did wake up. Told you so, Swizz!"

Assortments of stuff like that were shouted when I jumped down the stairs.

A kid with big candle on her hat came up to me. "Taffy isn't here right now because she was out getting a new lollipop, you want me to get her?" she asked happily.

"uh…sure?" I reply uncertainly. Did she seriously need clarification on that?

"no wait, Candlehead!" Rancis shouted at her.

She turns around. "what?"

He pulls her over and whispers a little too loudly.

"I took the lollipop on purpose! What would happen if prez saw her? You know they don't have a good history! you can't just go get her!"

"oh right! I can't. she's already here." Candlehead said airily, pointing to a girl in pink.

I follow the movement, and look long and hard at the pink girl. She's pretty familiar, just like Ralph, Sarge and Felix…except from what I heard it's not the good kind of familiar.

Why do I not remember all this? Hmm…I'm missing something here, something important.

Candlehead walks up to her and whispers something to her, and she frowns.

"Rancis, you did it? Why do you not want me over here?!" she demands.

Rancis groans." Because! Ralph said I had to do something! You two don't get along well!"

"chill out! It's a friendly rivalry, not like they have a death wish for each other, sheesh!" a girl with a winter hat argues.

"NO! I mean _before_ that! She can't remember anything and…someone else explain it!" he runs off, chickening out. I pay him little attention. I just _know_ there's something about this Taffyta girl…I almost have it…

She smirks. "well that took care of the problem." That's it! I got it! I think I remember that look on her before! A rush of memories comes to me. They're all…all of them…those are not good! That's…oh…

She's coming towards me. What to do…I should go ask Ralph. I should go ask Ralph _quickly_.

I speed over to Ralph, zipping around in code. I still don't know what that is, but I have a suspicion now.

"Ralph!" I whisper for him to let me up on his shoulder so I can tell him some stuff.

"what's up kid?" he asks after I successfully got onto his shoulder.

"Ralph, I remembered some stuff." I tell him, still whispering.

"that's great!" he says happily. He's pretty oblivious, huh?

"no, not great! Taffyta's awful!" I whine.

"oh, so you only remembered that part…uh…that's not the whole thing. It's been different for a while now." He tells me, flustered.

"how long is a while, meat head?!" I ask angrily. That seems like most of my memories.

"two years." He replies.

"the game is 17!" I exclaim.

"uhh….yeah….how do I explain?" he muses to himself.

"maybe that they're all big butt-heads?" I say angrily. These people can't just clean up their act after 15 years.

"oh boy…" Ralph says nervously.

"come on, let's go talk over there, ok?" he decides.

"I still don't see how you can explain what happened…" I grumble.

"I don't either." He sighs under his breath.

**AN: ok, this chapter was pretty fun to write, but the last part gave me a bit of trouble. I think I got it down though, I have a bit of next chapter planned and I think it's pretty good. I want to have Calhoun in it a little more. The story's coming around nicely, I think. Tell me what you guys think, though. I hope you liked it.**


	4. not so sweet memories

**AN: this chapter was kind of late, but it's a little longer than the others, so hopefully that makes up for it. This is copyright Disney, because I obviously don't own it.**

Ralph stops at a clearing decently far away from the racers, but in my opinion not far enough.

"Ok, here's the explanation: they had no idea what they were doing." he says bluntly, as if that made sense.

"Yeah, because that fixes _everything. _No, really, I think I forgive them already. Of course they didn't know that they took out all of their issues on me. In fact, I think that explains, oh wait, _absolutely nothing._" I argue sarcastically, being a little meaner than necessary, I admit it, but I'm mad, ok?

"Believe it or not, they didn't have much of a choice." Ralph says bitterly, shifting his body weight to a different leg and making him tilt a little. He's fidgeting.

_He_ doesn't even seem to believe what he's saying!

"They had lots of choice, and you know it too. Word of advice, don't lie to children." I remark, crossing my arms and glancing sideways at him.

I can't believe that he thinks there was a reason they did that besides the logical one. It's clear as sugar crystal why they did it, I'm the broken character. The one who _doesn't_ race, or live in an actual house, or have friends. There wasn't any other reason, they're just jerks. Big, mean, butt-heads.

"Hey, you can't have that much to complain about, I get thrown off a building every day during game time, I'm the bad guy. What could these kids have done to you that was so awful?" he asks a pretty dumb question, raising both his hands in the typical shrug.

So I didn't tell him? He seems to be my friend.. Well, to be honest, I probably didn't want to re-live anything once I had finally gotten out of the nightmare that was those 15 years, but since I have virtually no good memories at the moment, It won't hurt to give him some examples.

"what could they do? I'll tell you what 'these kids' have done. "I mock his voice, then continue. "They've pushed me down hills, out of trees, off a moving kart when they thought it would be funny to tie me onto one, and lots more stuff. They've destroyed anything I've built, even if it had nothing to do with racing. One bit me, which was gross because I'm still not sure whether or not he had rabies, but I don't think he did…and how he got that close I'll still never know…another time they tied me to a candy cane branch and dangled me over the nesquick sand, then dropped the branch and left me there to escape by myself. They've thrown chocolate rocks, sugar cubes, gumballs, jawbreakers, tires, wheels, two by four candy pipes, just to name a few things. If you can find it in this game, chances are they've thrown it at me. One thing they didn't throw was a scrap of kindness, but I think we're both well aware that that was never going to happen. Not to mention king _crazy_ was fungeon happy." Having just ended my previous rant, I launch into a whole new one.

"What's that? _Breathing_ in the air near a racetrack? Fungeon! Oh? Going to the dump to look for parts? Fungeon! Trying to interact with the citizens? Fungeon. Same old, same old. You know what? I had to have been in there _at least_ 100 times, and it was never, not once, fun. Fun dungeon my butt…someday I swear that _nutcase _will get what's coming to him…hey, smelly? You ok, you look kind of…really angry." I stop talking as I realize that Ralph is mad, really, _really_ mad.

His fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white, face pulled down into a scowl so deep his teeth showed, and his face visibly reddened from anger, the full realization of what could happen hit me.

Ralph is huge. And angry. And he has fists as big as I am. I think I'll just…yeah, I think I'll move off to the side…

He makes a loud grunt and smashes a jawbreaker. And when I say smash, I mean totally destroyed. There wasn't even _dust _big enough to see left behind. And that thing was almost my size! He could do some real damage…this is gonna be so cool to watch!

I sit down and watch him rampage towards the racers, and smirk a little when they run around like wimps. It's kinda funny.

Serves them right, the jerks.

Felix comes running up to me, distressed. "Vanellope! You gotta calm him down!"

I snort. "Are you kidding? You're the one who works with the guy, why don't you talk to him? I'm sure he'd just _looove _to sit down and have nice long talk about his feelings right now." I tell him sarcastically.

I don't want to step into _that._

"He doesn't listen to me!" Felix cried." He won't even listen to Tammy when he gets like this! Everyone listens to Tammy!" he holds his hands out in front of him, making panicked gestures out of desperation.

"Why does everyone listen to her?" I ask. My question is answered by Sarge herself as she does crowd control.

"_MAN UP, YOU SUGAR-COATED SISSIES! IF WE WERE IN MY GAME YOU'D ALL BE AS GOOD AS CY-BUG CHOW!"_ she shouts at the top of her lungs, then takes her giant gun and fires it off into the air three times. Everyone immediately stands still as stone, not wanting to risk her wrath. Everyone but Ralph, who continues to pound candy structures into the ground like there's no tomorrow. This is a tantrum of epic proportions.

"So you're telling me…" I begin turning to Felix slowly, pointing at where Tammy and all the racers are, "that he won't listen to _**that**_, and you expect him to listen to me?"

He nods yes.

"Why would he listen to me?" I ask irridiculously.

Sgt. way-too-serious comes up to Felix's side, and holsters her gun. "You tell us, pipsqueak. Whatever you did works like a beacon on a cy-bug though. You say the word, and he's about as dangerous as a newborn kitten."

I have no idea what a beacon or a cy-bug is, but I'm assuming she meant it worked. I shrug and give it a try.

"_Hey blockhead! Knock it off, will ya? You're scarin' people!"_ I shout irritably over at him, and he stops mid-swing and looks over to us.

Then he trudges over to us, mumbling apologies. When he got decently close, Sarge walked up to him, glanced up, and _slapped him. _

I look over the two in shock, waiting for Ralph to explode or punch her back or something. He just skulks over to my side and grumbles "I deserved that."

I look up at him, then back at Sarge, not really understanding what was happening.

Really? That's it? Nothing?

Sarge notes my reaction and points over at Ralph confidently. "Told you, as dangerous as a newborn kitten." She taps his shoulder. "Right big guy?" she goes over to him, almost daring him to go at her.

He grimaces and frowns at her, rather than doing anything else.

He turns around so that she's behind him and points a thumb at Sarge, silently mouthing, 'what the heck? ', and causing me to laugh a little.

It was during this that the racers slowly got comfortable and began heading towards our little clearing. As they moved closer, I subconsciously inched toward Ralph's tree trunk of a leg. I warily scanned their faces, looking for evidence of whatever nasty trick they were surely planning.

By the time they had neared Felix, who was about a meter away from me, I was behind Ralph's leg, peeking out at the racers and grinning. I was pretty confident. Ralph obviously scares them, so if I'm close enough to him, they won't go near me.

This logic was proved wrong when I heard a sudden noise from _right_ behind me.

"What're you doing?" ack! I glitch up to Ralph's shoulder and cling to it for a second. Why would _anyone _feel the need to be that close behind me? This kid was practically breathing down my neck!

"Jeez, what's wrong?" the culprit-Candlehead- asks, as if she hadn't done anything.

Ok, well, friendly or not, that is not going to slide.

I hop off Ralph's shoulder, prepared to tell her just what was wrong.

"You. Scared. The living. _Fudge _out of me. What the heck would you need to be that close behind me for? And why _behind me? _What, were you gonna pants me or something?" Candlehead hung her head, as if ashamed, and muttered a quick "sorry…" before going towards the group of racers. I shake my head.

That was weird.

After a long and awkward silence, Minty spoke up.

"soo….since this is over and all….anyone want to come to my house?"

"sure."

"yeah."

"I guess."

A murmur of agreement went through the racers, and they began to talk. Snowanna seemed to notice I had said nothing and asked if I was going. I almost laughed at the idea.

"Me? Do I look stupid to you? I'm _not _falling for that one, so, better luck next time." At this, everyone turned to stare at me. After a short amount of time it bothered me.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer!" I huffed, and spun on my heel to head to my house. Well, it's technically a house. Sort of. It has a roof, ok?

"Where are you going?" Jubileena piped up.

"None of your beeswax, so buzz off." I walk away casually, leaving them to wonder what was going on and figure it out themselves. I don't care if they don't know I lost my memory, or that I obviously forgave them for some reason. They were mean, I could do it right back.

**(Felix's POV.)**

Vanellope just stormed off. Poor little darling must be so confused right now, all she seems to remember is them being mean, and here they are trying to be nice. It was quiet for a moment until the pink girl spoke up.

"Who peed in _her_ lemonade?" she commented snarkily.

I was immediately very cross with her. "Young lady! That is no such way to speak of your friends!"

Ralph was quite upset as well, though he took a much different approach. He began shouting…for lack of better words, _colorful _profanities at the child, that should not be repeated in respectful company.

Taffyta and her pals stared in wide-eyed shock as he stomped off after Vanellope.

"Damn. That's quite the vocabulary he's got there." Tammy whistled.

Before I can remind her not to swear like that, in the presence of _children, _of all people, she continues.

"I'm going after wreck-it and shortstop, so have fun explaining everything to the cavities. Good luck, hon." Tammy shrugged, ruffled the hair that wasn't under my cap, making the hat move to the side, and walked off.

She's still perfect, even after she swears…how lucky am I? I shake myself from that train of thoughts and turn to the kids again.

"I can fix it…" I say nervously, straightening my cap. I have more than a little explaining to do, but I will not explain Ralph's foul language.

"well…" I draw the kids' attention to me. This might take a while…

**(Vanellope's POV.)**

Shortly after I ditched the racers, I hear Ralph plodding along behind me, and the earth shakes a little. I don't mind that he tagged along, if anything I'm actually kinda glad for the company. Ralph is fun to talk to and hang out with. With most of my memories back, I think I figured out just how lucky that is.

"What's up, don't you have another tantrum to throw, diaper baby?" I ask casually, continuing to walk forward.

"Nah. I'm too busy following little-miss grumpy pants around." He retorts, keeping the straight face and casual tone in an imitation of mine.

"Actually, you can't call me a grumpy pants." I inform him in a know-it-all tone.

I just found a loophole.

"And why's that?" he asks, just like I figured he would.

"I'm wearing a skirt, mr. smarties-pants." I grin at having outsmarted him. He just laughs.

"You _do _know that's not how the expression goes, right? It's smarty-pants, not _smarties-pants._" He laughs a little as he says this.

"Not in this game it isn't." I say, as seriously as possible. We exchange glances for a moment after I say this. Then we burst into laughter.

" You two sure don't keep a low profile, I see. Mind if I join you two ladies?" Sarge comes out of nowhere and comes up over to us.

Normally I'd ask how she found us, but she's super-soldier lady, I bet she has some sort of tracking skills or something like that. Instead I answer.

"Sure, now it's a party, all we need is Felix." I say sarcastically, looking around as if I expected him to come out of the woods as well.

"Actually, Fix-it is fixing up the mess Wreck-it left behind." She says, glaring at Ralph momentarily. "So shortstop, headed to the mountain?" she asks.

How did she know that? Did I tell them about it and show them? That's pretty risky, but then again, I trust these guys a lot. Better be careful anyways.

I raise an eyebrow. "Yeah. How do you know?"

"Wild guess." She says drily. So I did tell them about it.

Then a thought strikes my mind. Do the racers know where it is?

"_They _don't know where it is too, right? Just you two and Felix?" I ask cautiously.

If the racers know where it is, I have to find a whole new hideout until I remember why I forgave them in the first place.

Thankfully, the answer is no.

"No, you didn't want to tell them. I think that was smart." Ralph confirms, looking down at me.

I can't resist the opportunity to poke fun at him.

"Well of course _you _think it was smart, I doubt your IQ has reached double-digits." I say sarcastically.

He shakes his head. "I guess I walked myself into that one."

"Yes you did." I say, smiling victoriously. I get back onto his shoulder.

It's nice up here. I wonder what Ralph meant earlier when he said he was the bad guy in his game, he's way too nice. I also wonder how I met Ralph. He had to have done something, because if he says it's been different for two years, and my memory cuts off at 15 with me remembering nothing about him, that means it was the same year he met me that everything changed. That can't be a coincidence.

This memory loss is stupid, I swear when I get it back and remember everything, whoever made me lose it is gonna be in huge trouble with me.

**AN: thanks for reading, tell me what you think! The story isn't over yet, it still has a chapter or two. This chapter was pretty funny to write for me.**


	5. wanna bet?

**AN: This took a while for a few reasons, the main one being that my internet went out for a day or two. Hopefully this longer chapter makes up for it. I know that none of my chapters are truly 'long', but the thing is, I don't like to just leave people hanging for about a month, which is about how long it would take for me to make a good chapter that is also significantly long. So I do short chapters, but more frequently. I know that might bug some people, but that's just how I do these…back to the point, this is copyright Disney.**

One short walk later, we arrived at the entrance to the mountain. I glance around for a minute, then realize that there's no way anybody would follow without Sarge knowing about it with some sort of crazy soldier instinct or something telling her about it. I thought_ I_ was over-alert, but she's just ridiculous about it.

I shrug it off and walk casually through the entrance. I always imagined that I'd either never tell anybody about this place or make a bigger deal about it when I did, but what's the point if they already know about it?

"So squirt, what's up with the mentos? We know you lived here, but why would you have picked somewhere so dangerous? Now's as good a time as any to ask, just to pass time." Sarge asks, looking for something to start a conversation with.

"It has a roof, and nobody but you guys knows it exists. That and I can make these totally awesome explosions with the mentos and cola." I explain, kicking a chunk of mento into the pond and making a tiny fizzle on the surface of the cola.

"Those are some low standards." Ralph jokes.

"Before you answer that, I'd like to know how you think the explosion caused by one mento falling in is awesome. I watch giant bugs blow up all day long, sure, but most people think something a little bigger would be awesome." Calhoun remarks.

"I hit off more than one." I reply, sticking my hands in my hoodie's pocket.

"How could _you _hit off more than one? I doubt a squirt your size could throw half the distance to way up there, much less hit off more than one." Sarge says irridiculously, looking me over.

"So you doubt my throwing power?" I ask confidently, raising an eyebrow in challenge. I can throw pretty hard, it's really the only fun thing to do to pass time besides build karts that'll just be broken later.

"Yes, I do." She replies, just as confident.

"I bet I can make more fall off than you can." I egg her on, daring her to challenge it.

"I bet you can't." she took the bait. Now I have an excuse. Perfect.

"You're on." I walk over to her and extend my hand. She stoops down onto a knee and shakes it. The bet's on.

Ralph notes this and steps well away from the cola, sitting on a rock a little past my bed. He probably knows that she just made a losing bet.

I point Sarge to where I keep some rocks to throw, and she moves over to the pile and picks a big one up. Winding up her arm like a pitcher, she builds up speed and lets it go.

It shoots towards the ceiling, and knocks off quite a few mentos. I'm a little impressed, but I can top that no problem. I side-step away from the explosion, and watch the room light up with the nice orange-y glow the cola makes, not even wobbling a little at the tremors caused by the big explosion.

Sarge looks over at me and nods her head when all the exploding dies down. My turn. I smirk a bit.

I walk past smelly and Sarge to get to the throwing rocks. I pick one up and launch it as hard as I can into the mentos above the cola, and it rockets towards the target. To their surprise (and much to my pleasure) it knocks off two whole columns of them, and then some. At _least_ 4 times as many as the Sarge did.

It makes a _gigantic _explosion, and the sizzling hot cola comes down in great orange waves while I dart out of the way of the falling liquids, keeping my footing in the earthquake it made. It was awesome.

"Ha! Take that, I told you I could throw!" I shout in the middle of the explosion. The Sarge is too busy trying to not get scorched or fall on her butt to notice.

A few minutes later, after tons of bubbling, fizzing, and leftover mentos that I knocked loose falling in, the cola finally began to settle.

_Boom! _Another small explosion breaks out behind me. Did I say _settle_? What I meant was '_not blow up as often'_.

Sarge dusts herself off and looks around. She then looks down at me.

"I have to admit, your arm is a lot stronger than I expected. How the holy hotcakes did a pipsqueak like you out-throw me?" she still seems pretty surprised, even though she expresses little emotion.

"Well, for starters, I _aimed_, you just threw the rock as hard as possible. Not that it would have mattered if you did aim. I spend _lots _of time throwing rocks, you forget that I know this place inside-out." I tell her happily, rocking back and forth on my feet. I just beat a soldier in a contest of strength, basically. Her pride must really hurt.

She debates what I said while I look at the mentos roof. It has a few little holes in it, and light from outside pokes in in little beams, landing on the floor by the track.

Wait what?

I do a double take and rush over to the oval indent in the ground, that's obviously a racetrack of some sort. It's been made into a moat of sorts, as some of the hot cola made its way in there, but it's a _track_! As in, for _racing_!

I search my memory of the time since I've woken up.

Mentions of a kart crash. I had to have been driving to get in one of those. Rancis freaked when he thought I had brain damage. Nobody made a move to harass me… Invited to Minty's house. This is starting to add up. What happened that was obviously the biggest part in this huge turn-around? I know it has something to do with Ralph, he has the missing piece of this puzzle.

I relax a bit and walk away from the track. I'm going to figure this out myself, no asking Ralph. Just as soon as I can figure out when I got a track, I think I'll remember more…no, nothing.

That's disappointing. Oh well.

I turn back to the others, Sarge is asking a question.

"How did you not fall on your caboose when that explosion made a crazy tremor? Wreck-it even swayed a little. Unless you'd like to tell me that you Sugar Rush kids are part mountain goat, that makes no sense." She points out, sarcastically at the last bit.

Ralph seems to already know this one, so I really only need to answer Sarge. What _didn't _I tell him?

"Well for starters, I'm assuming we aren't, because I think I'd know about that kind of thing. Second, I didn't fall over because I kept my balance, _a-doy_. Explosions are nothing compared to avalanches up at the ice-cream peaks, those are something I _might_ lose my balance in. Can't say the same for the other racers though, they're about as balanced as turtles flipped onto their backs. I wonder why?" I ask a rhetorical question, making it obvious that's what it is. I know why, and I can tell them no problem.

"Why?" Ralph asks plainly, guessing I wanted someone to ask and guessing right.

"Because they never _do _anything! If they aren't on a manhunt for me or something stupid like that, they're sleeping or racing! I've never seen them do anything else, seriously! Why do you think I hang out in trees, those bozos can't even climb!" I exclaim, laughing a little.

"It's fun to sit up there and tease them about it. Apparently they can't take a joke either, though." I continue talking.

"Not _my_ fault Taffyta's oversized ego is also oversensitive…" I mutter under my breath, thinking back to that time. My head hurt for days after that one.

"Anyway, it's kind of ironic that I know the game they claim I'm not s'posed to be in better than they do, right? They've never even checked the mountain ranges; there aren't any footprints up there besides mine. It's really neat, you can snowboard down the whole thing. Fastest thing ever. There's also a dessert a little past the forest, but they don't know half this stuff exists. I've got little hidey-holes set up all over the game. If anyone finds one, it's off to the others. This is the only one I've ever needed, though, and I like it the most. Should I have spilled all that? You won't tell, right?" I almost can't believe I just poured out most of my secrets. It's a good thing these two are my friends and not strangers.

I almost feel bad doubting them, but it can't hurt to be sure.

"Nah, we wouldn't." Ralph grunts affirmative. "You've already showed me some, and you have quite the talent for finding neat places. Should we go see what Felix is up to? It's almost been an hour and a half, you'd think he'd have got everything settled by now…"

**at that same moment-**

**(Felix's POV.)**

It's a disaster zone here! The kids are freaking out, the civilians are running in circles, and they won't listen no matter how nicely I ask! This is getting ridiculous…I need to get their attention somehow.

"Ahem, excuse me, sir? Err...or you could keep running, that's fine…Oh! Ma'am, could you- nevermind, sorry for disturbing you. Hello? Is anyone listening? It's ok, guys, it's all going to be fixed soon. Hello?" Nothing I say is working, they're just ignoring me! I'm beginning to get a little cross with them, they need to respect visitors to their game.

I'll ask politely once more, just in case.

"Sweetie -your name's candle-something, right?- could you please ask your friends to calm down?"

"But they're all panicking, I obviously have to do the same thing!" she says as way of explanation before running past me.

Ok, I've had quite enough of this nonsense. If they would just listen I can calm them down.

I hop to the announcing booth and look for the spare microphone. I switch it on and look for the other one, the one that was in use. I know wires and such, so this should do the trick…

I touch the microphones together, and it makes a loud, ear-splitting screech that could be heard across half of Sugar Rush. Everyone stops panicking and covers their ears.

Good, I have their attention.

"Folks, calm down! If you would listen for a moment you'd hear the rest of my explanation!" I exclaim.

"There's more?" the racers and townspeople look to me for the rest of the information.

"Yes, there's more. It's just a temporary thing, understand? I just recommend you give her some space until she figures the rest out. You guys are too quick to panic, just calm down and wait, it can't take more than a few days, or a week or two tops. It's _fine. _Everyone's just a little shaken up, is all." I say as calmly as possible, assuring them as I do.

They all take this into consideration and relax, it seems I have fixed the situation, and just in time too.

Tammy, Ralph and Vanellope are coming, and the racers and citizens alike flinch at the sight of the first two.

Vanellope keeps her sight locked on me, completely ignoring the racers and citizens and avoiding eye contact with any of them, while Ralph glares something awful at anyone daring to even look her direction. It appears he's still holding a _slight _grudge.

He's always had one for them, but he's making it even more obvious now. What could the kid have told him that made him this edgy with the other racers?

Tammy gets right to the point. "You were taking a while, we heard the mics screech. They weren't cooperating, I'm assuming? It seems you have them relaxed now, but do you want me to make sure they got the message?"

"Oh, no thanks, Tammy. I think I've fixed everything here, including the mess." Sometimes she can handle things a little on the…_extreme_ side, and I don't want them to all get scared right after I calmed them down.

I turn around to see a few of the racers pestering Vanellope, just like I told them not to.

She's dead-set on ignoring them, though she gives off several visual signs that she's extremely irritated. She exhales loudly, and crosses her arms, rolling her eyes at whatever the other racers are saying and tapping a foot impatiently. She wants to get this over with, and _quick_.

Ralph isn't over there because he had lumbered over to me when Tammy asked her question.

Oh dear, this won't end well…

**(Vanellope's POV.)**

The racers won't leave me alone! All this whining and asking me to remember stuff…do they think I'm not even trying to figure this out?!

I mean, _come on!_ I know that some of them aren't the brightest, but _jeez_, can't they take a hint? And they're totally crowding me. I'm used to being avoided like the plague, so suddenly having so little personal space is unsettling…and one more reason that they're bothering me.

There's only about five of them around me right now, but I know that all the other racers are watching, I can practically feel it. I have no doubt that _she _is behind me, staring a hole in my code.

I let out another exaggerated huff, and turn around. I'm going to check.

Looking up with the bored, annoyed expression I'm using, I check for Taffyta's stare. Just like I thought, she was looking, a little while back.

I make eye contact, and my expression falters, for a split second, and I look away again.

Those blue eyes…chilling, to the very core. Almost makes me want to shudder. _Almost._ It was weird this time. She didn't seem to be glaring at me, but she wasn't smiling either. Her face was blank, aside from the way I could tell she was evaluating me. Whatever she was searching for, weakness or something else, I'm not going to show it to her.

I shake it off, and continue ignoring the other racers.

"What do you remember?"

"Are you mad at us?"

"Are we all going to be in trouble later?"

"Can you hear? Guys, do you think she can't hear?"

"What is the crash made her deaf?! That would be awful.."

"I think she's just ignoring us…"

"Does your head still hurt?"

These. People. Are going. To drive. Me crazy. Will they just can it already?!

"That's a good question, _does _your head still hurt?"

"The only thing making my head hurt is your constant badgering about everything!" I snap." Do you remember this? Do you remember that? Are you ok? Did you go deaf? Questions, questions questions! You're going to drive me crazy!"

They blink and step back.

"Are you going to answer our questions?" Candlehead asks stupidly, before I calm down even a little.

"You know what?" I say quietly, extra calm-sounding compared to my little outburst. They lean in." You can take your questions and _shove em'!_ _I don't care_! _At all_! Even a _little_! Just stop bothering me!" I shout angrily.

They all flinch, and move away quickly. I cool off, and Ralph finally stomps over, drawn by my yelling.

"Well, that's one way of handling it." He says bluntly.

Well, at least he's not going to make me apologize.

I see Felix begin to come over, and groan inwardly.

But he will.

**AN: This chapter had a fun little contest in it, and a few of my theories In it as well. Vanellope had to have some sort of passtimes, right? So, yeah, that's what I came up with. I can always imagine her being the most active of all the racers, because she walked and ran everywhere, while the others just drove. Not to mention Vanellope's pretty smart. She had to have some sort of backup hideouts, right? So lots of my little thoughts on what she might have done with all her spare time ar in here. Thanks for reading, and tell me what you think about the story so far! **


	6. the kart

**AN: hey there! This chapter took a little bit, cause I got sidetracked. Sorry about that. This is copyright Disney, obviously, and with that aside, I hope you enjoy it!**

"_Vanellope!_ When did you learn such manners?!I'm appalled!" Felix tells me off sternly, crossing his arms and staring me down.

Well this is just _great_….

"Surely you wouldn't speak that way to your friends, would you?" he continues angrily.

"Well, then it's a good thing I don't consider them my friends…." I mutter under my breath, just a little _too _loudly, looking off to the side as if I'm suddenly interested in the ground over there.

"What was that?! Listen, little miss, you don't know it now, but they _are _your friends, and I _insist_ that you apologize right this minute!" Felix demands.

"And if I don't?" I challenge defiantly, looking him in the eye. I'm not apologizing to them, no way.

"If you don't, I will make you!" Sarge butts in angrily, looking down at me angrily.

Well that changes things. It's either apologize or be forced to do it at gun point….I weigh the options, and decide that option two is just a _tiny bit _more humiliating.

"_Fine._ I'll apologize, Captain killjoy. Just don't expect me to act happy about it." I grumble, and set off towards the racer's homes.

This won't be fun…at all.

Followed by Felix(Ralph didn't want to come and Sarge was forcibly keeping him from smashing things) I grudgingly apologized to _all of the racers._

Yes, _all of them_. Even the ones I didn't yell at. Not fair at all, right? But Felix 'insisted' and I had to do it or else Lieutenant _lunatic_ would go crazy.

I have a lot of those nicknames for her.

I managed to unhappily apologize pretty well, and there weren't too many problems. I got invited inside once or twice, but quickly refused and left. The only real problem happened at Taffyta's house.

"I'm not moving one step closer." I declare, and plop myself down well away from that _death trap_. Felix is insane. Going within ten yards of there is like walking up to a big, starving lion and saying, 'Please, attack me! I love the feeling of being violently torn to pieces!'

"Nonsense, young lady. You go up there and apologize like a decent person." He demands, pointing to the door of her house. Her disgustingly pink, horribly girly house. The house that she was _inside of._

"I'm not moving. You can go apologize, but she won't care." I cross my arms.

"She's an alright kid, why don't you just go say sorry?" Felix pleads, a bit more gently.

"If you like her so much, why don't you write her a love letter?" I comment sarcastically.

He laughs a little. "I don't think Tammy would be overly happy with that idea."

"Whatever, just don't make me go anywhere near that pink nightmare. I'm going to go find Ralph. Tell me when you've been tortured enough." I get up and walk away, leaving Felix to his own thoughts.

Once I can no longer see the house, I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. _Phew_, crisis averted. I rush over to where Ralph is.

"Hey kid, did you get it overwith?"he asks, easily shaking Sarge off of him.

"Yeah…that was stupid, I didn't even yell at most of them…" I complain, jumping up onto his outstretched hand. He pulls me up to his shoulder.

I hafta admit, I get why it's so cool to be up here. Makes me feel tall. That and I'm close enough to shout in Ralph's ear.

"Whatever, that's Felix for you. What do you want to do? You feel like driving?" he asks. I look over at him.

Did he even need to _ask? _

"I know, stupid question. Another thing I know is that you don't have even the basics down yet, so…round two of drivers Ed for you, I guess." He shrugs, and I grab his head to stay on his shoulder.

He grins sheepishly and sets me down. "I'm going to go get the kart. Why don't you talk to Sarge?" he walks off happily.

Sarge turns to me." I will _never_ understand how you do that. One minute he's having one of his infamous temper tantrums and the next he's as happy as clam."

"I guess it's just charm." I shrug it off. I must've really lucked out, he's an awesome friend. I still don't get what he meant when he said he was a bad guy.

Ralph lumbers on back, with a sloppy-looking kart in tow, slung over his shoulder.

He sets it down and I look at it. Wafer-base, gummy worm traction, a window, sprinkles, an engine…After studying it for a moment, I see a faint image. A memory! I study the kart a little harder, trying to latch on to the memory it was setting off.

Come on…almost got it…aha!

A group of memories comes in, all linked to the kart. There are a lot, but three come to the front of my mind.

Making the kart with Ralph. Learning to drive the kart with Ralph. And last…

Watching the kart get smashed, by Ralph.

I blink, and the memories go back to my mind. I look around and focus on the kart again. Barely a scratch.

But how? Was the last part made up, or a bad dream? Did we just get in a fight and he blew his top? Or was that recent and he was just trying to make up for it now? I'm not going to ask him.

He seems really, extra happy. And everyone is saying we're best friends. So I must just be missing some pieces of the story. Some very, _very _important pieces.

Yeah. That's all. Soon it'll all be figured out. And everything will be fine.

Even as I think this, I feel a small bit of doubt. Maybe driving will help.

"Hello? Kid, you ok?" Ralph's voice snaps me to attention.

"Huh?"

"You kinda spaced out there." He says, "So I was wondering if something was wrong. It's not like you to be quiet."

"Oh! No, everything's fine. I was just…taking a good look at it. It looks awesome!" I say, faking enthusiasm in a very convincing tune.

"Yeah, so let's see if I can figure this out…" I hop into the kart, pretending to not know the controls.

He lifts the back of the kart up, and points to the pedals." That's the go pedal, that's the stopper, and I still have no idea what this one does…that's pretty much all you need to know right away, I think."

"Got it. Can I go now?" I ask hopefully. I'm antsy to get going.

"hmm…promise not to get hurt?" he asks in a cautionary tone.

"Promise." I confirm.

"Ok, sounds good to me. Go ahead." He motions to the really long track, suggesting I race that one.

I have no problems with that. I rev the engine, and set off as fast as I can. Before I've gone too far, I hear Felix bounce in to where the others are. I guess they're going to talk about boring grown up stuff.

Glad I'm not over there anymore.

I kick the gear into full throttle when I find a straight stretch of track, and from there my little drive went alot faster.

Way sooner than I would have liked, I had gone about 20 laps and it was time to go to bed. Boring.

Besides, the drive had done little to get rid of my anxiousness about the one memory, it only made me forget until I finished up. Then all my doubts came back full force.

I refuse to ask Ralph or Sarge, or even Felix. It would make them feel bad, and they would all tell Ralph's side of the story.

I need to get the info from someone who wasn't involved, but would know all the details. A gossip.

Unfortunately, only one came to mind: Taffyta.

The more I thought about it, the more reasonable the idea became. I have to talk to her, there is no avoiding it.

I'll have to go now.

"Hey, Ralph…before I go to bed, I have to do something." I tug on his pant leg.

"Huh? What is it you have to do? You want me to come?" he asks, looking down to me.

"It's nothing. I'll be back pretty soon, no big deal. I just hafta go talk to someone." I explain. It's the truth, I just wasn't specific.

"Ok. Come see me when you're done with that." He lumbers over to a pretzel rock and sits down.

I walk over into the town, until I'm standing at the front door of _her_ house. I fidget, and look around, then swallow.

Here goes nothing.

I reach up and ring the doorbell. A few seconds later, the door slowly swings open.

"What do you need?" Taffyta stands in the doorway.

**AN: and that is how I ended the chapter. This story is coming to it's finale, it'll either be next chapter or the one after. I hope you liked it, and tell me what you think!**


	7. the right answer

**AN: hey guys, what's up? This chapter gave me more than a bit of grief, but It's finally done now. Writers block is a jerk, I wish it would just go away forever…anyways, I wasn't super sure how I'd write this chapter, but I think I wrote it decently. This is copyright Disney, obviously.**

I look over Taffyta carefully; she seems to be in a state of low threat. Just in case, I'm cautious. "I need information, you're the game's resident gossip." I say quickly, avoiding her eyes.

I'm not going to sit and have a long conversation with her, just ask her, get a few details, and take off. No more, no less.

Because as much as I tell myself that nothing scares me, _she does._

I'm not a wimp. I'm not supposed to be afraid of anything. But, to tell the truth…Taffyta, to me, is the stuff of nightmares.

I can worm my way around the question all I want, I can avoid it, and I can lie through my teeth about it. But I know exactly what I fear, the only thing that even phases me. And it's her.

She's inescapable, it's like anywhere I can go, she's already there, waiting and planning what she was going to do. No matter what happened, just when I thought I'd seen her worst, she'd pull some other nasty trick from up her sleeve.

And she would force me to do it over and over again, life itself was just a repeat of all the things she did.

All of the shoving me in the mud, all of the calling me names, all of the things thrown, all of the demeaning taunts said. And for _what_? What did they have to prove? Why did they continue to rub my face in the dirt, time and time again? They made their point, why did they feel the need to _keep_ making it, every single day?

They were the racers, everyone loved them. Nobody ever said a mean word about them, not once was that nasty, disapproving glare turned upon them. But me? Nobody so much as bat an eyelid when people did that to me.

And why was it all going on, what had I ever done? Why was it that, day one, everyone just hated me?

Why was that? Here's the answer: _because of something that wasn't my fault._

It wasn't my fault, it _isn't _my fault. But they didn't care. They didn't even bother to ask. They thought they were _so_ much better, so far above me. They were wrong.

I spent all of my time trying to show them that, I did so much to try and get them to like me. But it didn't matter. All they did was look at that one thing, the thing that wasn't my fault, and judge me for it. They thought that they could tell who I was, just by that.

No matter what, even if their very lives depended on it, they would have never tried to be nicer.

And she was in charge of all of them, she made all the plans, and set up all the traps. She did all of the talking down to me, all of the things she could to tell me that I was inferior. She was the best, and I was nothing, that's what she said with all her actions.

All of that spite and resentment, and yet…here I am, at her doorstep. I must be really, really tired to have thought of doing this. That, or just really confused. Oh well.

They say things are different now. Now is the time to put that to the test.

"Well, you picked the right person, I guess. What do want information on?" She asked, sounding bored. I couldn't tell if it was a trick or she just was bored.

"Ralph. I remembered something, it's been bothering me." I tell her stiffly. No details, just ask the question, and get the heck out.

"If you just remembered how bad his breath is now, that's _your _problem." She said pointedly.

"As if. How could anyone forget that stench?" I shoot back. Seriously, that's just about the first thing I noticed.

"Do you wanna know about how he's the bad guy? I can tell you all about that." She told me.

I shrug. It's a start. "Why not?"

"Well, in his game, Felix is the good guy. You know him. Anyways, Ralph destroys the building in that game. His full name _is _'Wreck-it' Ralph, after all. But the game is _Fix it_ Felix Jr. So, he vandalizes a building for his job, that's probably why his fists are so big. He's the bad guy 'cause he's the enemy NPC in his game, Felix is the hero because he 'defeats' Ralph. You got pretty mad when you figured out that the whole point of his game was to throw Ralph off a building. Anyways, that's why he's the bad guy. The whole reason he came to our game was because he just got sick and tired of everyone looking at him like he was a terrible person just for doing his job. Main problem that everyone has with him is his temper, and how gullible he is. He falls for everything, even that really old 'look at that bird!' one. So, obviously, if he's got that kind of power and is that gullible, people would trick him into doing stuff. That happened once with the two of you, someone told me about it…what happened again?" Taffyta trails off, trying to figure out what she had heard.

So that's why he's the bad guy? Nobody liked him because of it? Just because that was his 'role', what he was coded to do? Something he couldn't do anything about? Where have I heard _that _before?

All sarcastic thoughts aside, this mostly answers my question. Gullible. He's definitely easy to trick, I could tell that without Taffyta's help.

Just one more question…

"He smashed the kart. Do you know why?" I ask, at first planning for it to sound casual, but accidentally blurting it out.

"Oh! Yeah, that's what it was. Word on the street was that he did it cause king candy told him to. I think there's more to it than that though." She replies.

King candy? He sold me out? What a dirty..!...Hmm? Looks like Taffyta has more to say.

"I'm almost sure there's more to it than that, actually. We all saw how he defended you, and then we heard he helped you bake a kart, _and _taught you how to drive on top of it. But, the way you told the story, the deal after he chased us off was that _he only had to get you a kart_. Not to mention, he never had to take that deal in the first place. He could have very easily just stolen back the medal from whoever won it with sheer force. Why would he agree to a different plan that was way less likely to succeed if he didn't have at least a _little_ concern for you? Another thing is, he was pretty obviously tricked by king candy. Everyone was, that guy's whole life was a lie. He wasn't even in the game originally, he snuck in and altered the game's coding! He was a very convincing liar, I have no doubt he used his stupid excuse on Ralph. Think about it; what did king candy always yell at you for?" Taffyta asks, waiting for me to answer.

"Trying to race. You were there most of those times, you know." I reply impatiently, trying to figure out what she's getting at.

"Why did he yell at you for that?" Taffyta continues, once again waiting for my answer.

"He always rambled something about me getting the game unplugged." I say, indifferently. He was lying the whole time anyways, what did it matter?

"And who couldn't leave if that happened?" her next and last question blows me away. I had never thought about that, what would happen. But it worked out fine, didn't it?

I blink a few times.

"Exactly. His excuse was always, 'if the game gets unplugged, she does too.' All the time. If you remember him smashing the kart, try and remember what he said at the same time. I bet king candy fed him the same lie, and he thought he was helping. Case closed." Taffyta said smugly. She looked proud for having figured that out.

I think back to the time he did that.

'_This is for your own good.'_

So that's why…he thought he was helping…but was he? I know how the story starts, but the ending is blank. How could I know for sure what he did after that? Did he succeed in his first goal, only getting the medal, did he cave and find another way to get the kart back? Did someone else come do the same thing but right, and then the only reason he's here now is because he felt guilted into being my friend?

That last thought isn't all too pleasant. But I'm not asking Taffyta any more questions.

"Thanks, I think that makes some sense." I tell her, even though I'm dying to ask one more question.

She turns around so that her back is facing me and prepares to close the door. Before she does, she decides to look at me over her shoulder. "By the way, that's not the whole story. You still have lots to figure out if you think that's it. But you know what? That's one story that only two people can tell." With that, the door shuts.

What did she mean?

'_That's one story that only two people can tell.'…._

I think she wants me to ask Ralph. I'll do it tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow sounds like a good time. I'm sleepy, so that's why I can't do it now.

With that conversation fresh in my mind, I head off for where Ralph is waiting.

"Hey, kid. You tired yet?" he gets up from the now crumbled pretzel thing he was sitting on and lumbers towards me.

"Yeah." I yawn in the middle of the word, only proving my point.

"Well then we should get going. Come on, where do you want to sleep?" he asks, now standing around in front of me.

"I can _pick _where I sleep?" I ask in disbelief. It might seem insignificant to another person, but it's pretty surprising to me.

"Yeah. Castle, mountain, on top of someone's roof, it doesn't really matter _where,_ as long as it's not somewhere dangerous." He shrugs. "So where?"

"Mountain. I don't think I'd want to sleep somewhere else, it's nice in there." I decide, heading towards the mentioned area. Ralph ambles along behind me compliantly, following.

When we get there, he pulls an actual blanket (not candy wrappers) out of a little box by the bed.

"Here you go. Goodnight, kid." He hands me the blanket, moves over to a gumdrop that was dragged in here, and rests his head on it.

I just sort of stand there for a minute, blanket in hand, and watch him get ready to sleep. On the floor.

Not sure what to do, I go over and nudge him with my foot."Uhh…you know we could probably get something in here you could use as a bed…"

"Hmm? Nah, I'm fine. This is good." He stirs, and gives an answer. Apparently this is comfortable for him?

That makes no sense, but whatever. I hop onto my improvised bed, and pull the blanket over me, prepared to sleep.

Five minutes later, my eyes are still open and I'm beginning to doubt that sleep is possible. Something's bothering me.

Am I just unsettled? Is it something I'm not doing according to routine? Whatever it is, it's making sleep hard to get.

I sigh, pull the blanket off, and walk over to Ralph with it. For some reason, I'm not sure why…I have a feeling that whatever happened with that whole kart smash thing…I have a feeling that whatever went down after that, he handled it. So I'm going to trust him, unless that feeling is proven wrong.

"Ralph…I can't sleep…" I whine, bothering him with my problem. Because that's what you do with friends, right? I think so…

"Hmm? Wha's the matter, why not?" he asks in a tired slur, blinks a few times, and starts to get up.

"I don't know. I just can't. Do you mind if I…mind if I sleep with you?" I ask sleepily. I'm just really tired, plus I figure that if something _is_ unsettling me, sleeping next to someone that utterly massive can pretty much eliminate the feeling. Taking into consideration the possibility of him crushing me, it actually seems really dumb in retrospect.

"Sure, why not? Don't worry, I won't roll over. Just as long as you get to sleep soon, it's getting late. 'Sides, if Sarge finds out I extended your bedtime again I'm going to have a problem." He yawns, and closes his eyes again.

I nod in response, and pull the blanket over, pressing myself up against _somewhere_ on his side. Once I'm pretty cozy, I start to try to fall asleep again. Except it still won't work. Maybe I need to ask him now. I can't sleep until I figure out what happened _exactly._

"Ralph…" I whisper over to him.

"Yeah kid?" I can feel his side vibrate from speaking as he said this.

"What happened after you broke the kart that one time?" I'm still whispering, almost afraid for the answer. What if it's the wrong one? What if he doesn't give the answer I want to hear?

He shuffles around and turns on his side to look at me. "When did you remember that? Just now?"

"When you brought the kart over." I answer truthfully, avoiding his eyes.

"Why didn't you ask then?" he asks thoughtfully. For a guy I say is dumb, I guess he's actually kinda smart.

"I didn't know if I would get the right answer." I squirm around and look up at him pitifully. All I have to do is give him the puppy-eyes, that always works, always. Unless it's on anyone that knows me…but whatever, right? He has to answer.

"Well, I guess that's why you couldn't sleep." He says, looking back at me. I guess he was going to answer anyways.

"Anyways…I know breaking the kart was wrong _now_, but at the time, I actually thought it was the right thing to do. You see, that king guy told me somethin', and it kinda made me wonder just what would happen if you won the roster race. On one side, I thought, the gamers would love you. But, on the side he pointed out, it could spell certain death for you." He looks up and rubs his neck with a hand.

"Now, I've always been a bit of a pessimist, so, I always assume that something will turn out worse rather than better…you can see where I was going with that whole thing, right? Well, after, you know, all the smashy stuff and the running away, I went back to my game. And I showed the nicelander the medal I got back. He didn't really care at all, and just left. So, I was still alone and all that, and I wasn't really feeling as good about myself as I thought I would. Naturally, I threw the Hero's Duty medal at my game screen, and it made the corner of the out-of-order sign move to show a game: Sugar Rush. So I thought to myself, '_Great, now even the universe is trying to guilt-trip me._'" I giggle a little at his comment. This is a serious answer, but that _was _kinda funny. Just a little. He continues.

"But it did make me notice something. On the side of the console, there's a picture of one of the racers. At first I thought nothing of it, but now that I had been in the game, I recognized it. It was, obviously, you. So I figured that something fishy was going on. I mean, why would you be on the side of the console if you weren't supposed to be in the game? So I picked off Sour Bill and asked him that same question. After a little interrogating, and a few threats to eat him, he spilled. He said that that king guy messed around in the code. I got Felix to fix the kart with his hammer, and took it to the fungeon. In which you made me insult myself until you were satisfied. You have a weird idea of an apology, you know that?" he tells me. I shrug and give him a 'what can you do?' look.

"After that, we took you to the race and the world turned crazy. Not to get into detail, but here are a few things that happened: King what's-his-face turned out to be an old psycho named Turbo, Cy-bugs began erupting out of the ground, I almost got killed by some creepy Turbo-king-cy-bug thingy, I fell headfirst into the mentos on top of the mountain we're in, you caught me, I still have no clue how, everything blew up from the mentos explosion, and then you crossed the finish line and all this crazy, trippy princess whatever stuff was revealed, and you wanted to be president because a princess was just _too girly_, and yeah, lots of weird stuff. To be honest, you can't really explain that much crazy stuff, you're gonna have to remember to actually understand any of it. That's about as good as an explanation I can give, I think." He rambles a little, but from what I can understand, that was pretty crazy. Really crazy, actually.

But I got my answer: He came back to fix the problem. So he gets the ok in my book. My best friend once more.

"Thanks. I think I can get to sleep now." I yawn, press in a little closer, and fall asleep, on the ground. I guess I really _can _sleep wherever I want.

I feel him roll back over to his back, and wiggle a little to get back to be being pressed into his side snugly. I let out a contented sigh, and return to sleep.

While I'm sleeping, images and little clips of my life pass through my head, coming back and giving a quick re-cap of what I don't remember. The big one came first. In a blur, I see Ralph smash the fungeon wall in, and get me out, and the clip jumps to being in the race. We're in a tunnel, and the psychopath king is trying to kill me. Then it clips into watching Ralph fall from a crazy height. Last, it shows that I catch him and the memory stops. All of the stuff he told me about.

When this is done, all the little games and happy things that I did with Sarge, Stinky, and Hammerboy appear.

They ranged to all sorts of things, from drawing on Ralph's face while he was asleep to playing keepaway with Felix's hammer.

At the end of this is only a random, out-of-sequence reel of everything left out, sped up to keep the pace. I'm sure it's filling all the blanks, but some of it moves too fast for me to catch what's happening.

I thought that was it, but then one last memory comes up-the race where I lost it in the first place. Who made me crash? Rancis?….I'm going to _kill_ him!

Before I realize it, I'm yawning and waking up. I cast a glance to Stinkbrain, who is still sleeping, and stand up slowly. No, I don't plan on getting up all the way.

Instead of doing that, I climb up onto his stomach, the blanket in tow. There I settle myself, not really sleeping, but closing my eyes and just thinking. Besides, he still won't get up for a while, if his rumbling snoring is any indication.

So I have all of my memories back…what to do now? Before Stinkbrain wakes up…I need to think of ways to get back at Rancis. I count off a few. I could _one_, prank him, _two_, remove the mirrors from his kart, _three_, _strangle him, four,_ kick him where the sun doesn't shine, _five_, annihilate him in the next race….I think I'll go with all five. Maybe as an added bonus I could sic Ralph on him too. Sarge also, if I play my cards right. I bet she's already threatened him with that thing that makes her men pee themselves when she mentions it, actually. And I'm sure Felix already gave him a lecture on safety, which is torture on it's own. Torture that can last up to three hours.

I'm satisfied with that list, so I go back to just relaxing a little and double checking that I got _all _of my memories back. Ralph makes a good thing to sit on.

Happily on top of him, I hang out there for a bit. Then I sit up and look around at the mountain. Technically Ralph could be considered a mountain all on his own, but I meant the diet cola mountain.

After a little of that, I pull one of his hands up onto his belly to play with it. Moving his fingers around, as I've done a thousand times, I investigate them. The weird thing I notice every time is that he has an extra finger. I mean, five, really?

Whatever. I need to get back to him on that. I pull his hand over my shoulder, and it pretty much fits all of me under it. It's like an extra blanket.

Now I'm kinda bored. I think I can be getting up now.

Pushing his hand off and sliding off him, I get off of Ralph. Before I can move too far, I hear him stir behind me.

"Wha time is it…?" he yawns groggily, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with a finger.

"I don't know, but I let you sleep in for like an hour, so you're welcome for that, stinky." I reply. It's amazing how he can sleep through explosions and earthquakes, yet the minute I get off him, he's awake. Weird.

"By the way, do you mind helping me get back at Rancis?" I ask casually, trying to sound as if I wasn't that interested.

"Sure, what for?" He replies, slowly standing up to his full and impressive height and stretching.

"For making me crash into a jawbreaker." He stops mid-stretch as I say this, and puts his arms down.

"You remember that?" he asks happily, his voice filled with an eager tone.

"_Nooo,_ of course not." I roll my eyes. "Yes I remembered, you big dummy!" I run up to his arm, where I swiftly climb all the way around up to his shoulder.

He grins and looks over at me. "You had me worried there, you know that?"

I'm instantly reminded of our conversation last night, and I stop smiling. "I'm really, _really_ sorry about last night. I didn't mean to not trust you, I was just kinda confused, and I didn't mean to make you worry, I swear!" I plead for forgiveness, and briefly wonder if I'll need to pull out the ol' puppy-eyes again.

After all, how could I ever _not trust_ Ralph all the way? That's like saying we aren't friends anymore, I trust him with everything.

Thankfully, he waves it off. "Don't worry about it, kid, you had every right to ask that. Besides, you liked my answer, didn't you?"

"It was a really bad recap." I tell him smugly, turning my head and looking away from him with my head tipped up. Any second now…

"Oh it was, was it? I caught you laughing a few times. Like…_this!_" he knocks me off my little perch on his shoulder, and catches me in a palm. From there he proceeds to try and tickle me with just _one_ of his big, blocky fingers, because anything more than that could crush me.

Being infinitely careful, he still manages to tickle me until I'm begging him to quit it. I didn't think he'd keep it going for this long!

"Stop!" I laugh and gasp for breath,"quit it, I'm gonna…haha…suffocate!"

"Is this a better explanation?" he continues relentlessly, laughing a little at me now.

By this point, I'm laughing so hard I've started to glitch, but I can't just glitch away because he has me caught in his hand, I'd only succeed in teleporting both of us.

"N-no-o-o!...h-ha-a..ha, it-t i-is…n't!" now my sentence is just pathetic, broken up not only by laughing and trying to breathe, but also skipping and repeating frames because of glitching.

After another terrible minute or two of that, he sets me down gently, where I catch my breath. "I…*huff* …hate you, *huff* you know that?" I catch my breath for near a minute, until I've finally restored all of my air.

"I'm sure you do." He gives a bemused grin, before letting me back up on his shoulder.

"Now that we're done with _tickle torture,_ do you mind if I go get the Sarge, I have to go ask if she'll help me threaten Rancis." I linger on the torture part, to make sure Ralph gets the hint that I _did not_ appreciate that.

"What do you want her to threaten him with that I can't?" he fake pouts, messing around with me. I'll give him the right answer anyways.

"I want her to tell him she'll do that thing, you know that one she threatened Markowski with when he got drunk on watch doody that one time? Circum-" Ralph cuts me off.

"Ok, that's enough, no need for words! I think it might just be a better idea to threaten turning him into a pancake, don't you? Yeah, I'm sure you do, let's go and _not talk about that word,_ ok?" He says quickly, speedily walking out of the mountain.

See, this is why I want the Sarge to say that, anytime someone says that word around a guy they freak out, especially if you threaten to do whatever it is that word means on them. I wonder if it's some sort of weapon that vaporizes guy cooties.

That's probably it.

On the way to where the Sarge and Hammerboy are, we run into Rancis himself.

"Hey, _Rancid!_ I need to ask you something! Did the Sarge already threaten you with-"I begin to shout, before being interrupted again.

"Hey kid! How do you feel about bein a pancake?!" Ralph cut in, purposely keeping me from saying the word.

"I don't wanna be a pancake!" Rancis cries, being as girly as Taffyta is when she does. I think he might actually have makeup on, too…..sweet mother of monkey milk, he _does _have makup on!

"Dude! Is that _makeup?! Really?_" I exclaim irridiculously, stifling a laugh at how he looks.

"Makup?" he touches his face. "_GlOYD!" _He shouts angrily at nothing, and I hear some people high-five from behind something.

Rancis furiously stomps over to where the sound came from, while me and Stinkbrain laugh our butts off where we saw him.

"Kid," Ralph says, wiping a laughter-induced tear from his eye," I don't know about you, but that was _definitely_ good enough revenge right there."

Gloyd comes running up to us from behind a gumdrop. "Take this! Just give me a copy of the photo!" he shoves a camera into Ralph's hand, and takes off running once more, and a few moments later Rancis appears, hot on his heels.

"Well…that was…unexpected. And _awesome!_ C'mon, Stinkbrain, we gotta go get some copies of this picture up in the station!" I laugh, glitching down and retrieving the camera from his hand.

"We have to do that before we visit Felix, though, he'll tell us to take em' down. So you'd better hurry with the copier in the apartment!" he warns.

"Then what are we waiting for?" I grab a finger and run up the bridge.

And only now does everything go back to normal for me. Me and stinky doing something stupid, Sarge and Hammerboy telling us off for it later, then all of us laughing about it right after that.

I have the coolest friends ever.

**AN: Ok! This is finally done! Thank you so much for all the reviews and love this story has been getting, I really appreciate it! I hope the end wasn't awkward, the main reason this chapter took so long was because I wasn't sure how to end it off. I think that Rancis getting what was coming to him was a good enough way to do that though. Anyways, I really hope you enjoyed this story, and thanks for reading!**


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